To the Last Article
by Stoplight Delight
Summary: Missing Moment from 'Against the Moon': in 'Trouble with Slytherins', Lily Evans returns to Hogwarts to begin her third year. After the firsties are Sorted and the feast is finished, she says goodnight to one friend and goes off to join the others. But Betta and Charlotte are concerned about the company Lily keeps.


' _I give thee warrant of thy place: assure thee,  
If I do vow a friendship, I'll perform it  
To the last article…'_

 _~from_ _Othello_

 **To the Last Article**

The Prefects in each House were gathering their respective firsties for the walk back to the common rooms. Everyone but the second years knew that now was the time to make haste, so as to be in the dormitories before the crowd of new students made the way impassable. The tables were emptying rapidly as Lily Evans rose, smoothing her robes and smiling at her friends.

'Go on ahead,' she said. 'I want a quick word with Sev before bed.'

Betta MacFusty nodded knowingly but Charlotte White, on the other side of the table, frowned. 'You've had all day with him,' she said.

Lily shrugged apologetically. 'I know,' she said. 'But it'll only take a minute or two. I'll catch up to you.'

'Go on, please yourself,' Betta said, her heavy Scots accent lending the words a singsong quality. 'Just don't go any further down than the Entrance Hall. You can't be trusting his gang to leave you in peace.'

'They're not his gang, not really,' said Lily, craning her neck to see across the crowded hall. Severus Snape's usual place near the foot of the Slytherin table was empty already. She had to hurry if she meant to catch him. 'I'll see you in the dormitory,' she promised her friends, and then she hurried off.

As she went, she heard a yelp of dismay behind her, and Sirius Black's angry voice. 'Bloody buggery hell!'

Lily felt her lips thin into a disapproving line. That was fine language to use, with the first years present! He had been in a strop all through the feast, angry, no doubt, that his little brother had been Sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor. Lily, who had been separated from her oldest and dearest friend by the Hat, might have had some sympathy for this – if only Black were not so spiteful towards Slytherins in general. Perhaps this would teach him a little compassion, and that was an outcome devoutly to be wished.

She edged past the convoy of small Hufflepuffs, eyes shining with wonder and delight and yet growing drowsy with the fullness of their stomachs and the lateness of the hour. Lily felt a burst of affection for the first years, remember her own initiation into the marvels of Hogwarts two years before. She wondered how many of them had Muggle parents, like hers: how many had experienced their first taste of this hidden and miraculous world no more than a fortnight before in Diagon Alley. Lily's hand went to her wand, tucked safely in the pocket of her school robes, and her heart glowed warm within her. There were moments, like this, when she still could not quite believe her good fortune.

She saw him at once as she passed into the Entrance Hall. Even among the scores of pupils in their black robes, thronging in the vaulted space and swirling into a sea that split off in two general directions – Gryffindor and Ravenclaw headed upstairs, Slytherin and Hufflepuff headed down – she knew her friend. He had just sprung down from the last marble step, and was scuttling off towards one of the lesser-used corridors.

'Sev!' she cried, her cry lost in the clamour of happy voices. She cleared her throat, opened her lungs, and deepened the timbre of her voice as she tried again. ' _SEV!_ '

He stopped, just on the verge of disappearing, and looked back. His thin face, which always had a sallow, shut-in sort of look, even after the long weeks of summer, was furrowed with unease as he scanned the crowd. His dark eyes had the wary, hunted look that Lily knew all too well. It was the look he wore whenever the two of them met down at the corner of Spinner's End in the evenings or at weekends – whenever his father was in the house, and might shout after him to get back in the house and see to his chores.

Mr Snape did not approve of Sev's friendship with Lily. She was a witch, and she was a girl, and when he was with her, Sev was not the frightened, beaten-down creature his father could control with a blistering gaze or a stern word. Mr Snape was always stern and often cruel. Lily was proud of the change she could work in her friend, proud of him for taking pride in himself, at least when it was just the two of them together. It hurt her heart to see Sev looking like that, harried and skittish, now that he was safe at Hogwarts and out of the reach of his father's spite.

She waved an arm high, drawing his eye, and saw his expression change at once. Relief and gladness brightened his face, and he beckoned eagerly to her. The Hufflepuff firsties were on the stairs now, and Lily had to inch past them as she ran down to join her friend. As soon as she reached him, he stepped further back into the shelter of the corridor, removing them both from general view. Lily looked back, puzzled, as if she might see what he feared behind her.

'What is it?' she asked. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' Sev said, though his eyes were still on the narrow sliver of the Entrance Hall. 'I just… I don't want trouble, not the first night.' He focused on her at last, and smiled. 'You look… are you glad to be back?'

'Of course!' said Lily, her excitement returning to warm her from fingertips to toes. She knew that she was smiling radiantly, perhaps a little foolishly. 'It's going to be a wonderful term, Sev. All the new lessons, and we'll be able to visit the village this year! Aren't _you_ glad to be back?'

'Of course I am,' he said, rather hurriedly. His expression brightened notably as he said; 'And we'll have two classes together this year, that's wonderful.'

Lily nodded happily. She had hoped that Gryffindor might be paired with Slytherin for either Divination or Care of Magical Creatures as well, but perhaps that was too much to ask. They had known from the off that they would be in Ancient Runes together, because there was only one class for all four Houses. 'Perhaps I should've taken Arithmancy as well,' she said regretfully. 'It might not be too late. I could speak to Professor McGonagall, and…'

But even before Sev shook his head, she knew it wouldn't work. She and her other friends, her Gryffindor friends, had made a pact: they were taking Divination and Care of Magical Creatures together. Betta had no interest in languages, and Charlotte had struggled with maths all her life.

Lily sighed. 'I couldn't tackle four new classes, though. It's not advisable, though I know some of the Ravenclaws do it. And I couldn't drop either of the other two: we three agreed to stick together in them.'

'Oh. _You three_.' Sev's gaze darkened and he did not meet her eyes. 'The girls.'

'Betta and Charlotte,' Lily said. Gently, she added; 'They're my friends too, Sev. We share a room. We do our homework together. We're… friends.'

'I know,' he muttered, his displeasure evident.

'You mustn't be jealous,' she said. 'It's only natural to have more than one friend, and Betta and Charlotte and I see so much of one another. I rode with you today, didn't I? And we've had the whole summer together.'

Sev nodded reluctantly. Lily had been obliged to choose between sitting with Charlotte and Betta on the train, in a compartment filled with third year Gryffindor girls, and sticking with Severus, who was not really welcome among them. Instead, the two of them had found a place further down the train, sharing with four little firsties who did not know about the divide between their two Houses. Sev had not much enjoyed their company, especially when the arrival of the tea trolley had wound their nervous excitement up into outright hyperactivity, but Lily knew he preferred it to the alternative. Among her friends, he would not have been able to lay claim to a fair share of her attention. He was quiet and unassuming: the cheery conversation would have overwhelmed him entirely.

Of course, if they _had_ ridden with Betta and Charlotte and Elsie and Paulina and the MacGreggors, they would not have wound up coming from the station in a carriage with James Potter and Sirius Black.

That memory doused some of Lily's good cheer. She reached out to rub Severus's arm, just above the elbow. He leaned into her touch ever so slightly, hungry for the simple show of friendship.

'We ought to be going,' she said. 'I'll be competing with the firsties for the stairs as it is. I'm not sure if I'll be able to meet you tomorrow… there's a great deal to organise for the start of term, and I know Betta's anxious to do some flying. But there's Potions on Monday! We'll still share a table?'

'Yes!' Severus said, almost viciously. A faint flush touched his sallow cheeks and he thrust out his chin proudly. 'I'd never want to work with anyone but you. It'd be a waste of our mutual talent.'

Lily giggled. They were the best in Professor Slughorn's class, constantly affirming and challenging one another as they improved upon the clumsy procedures and imprecise recipes laid out in the textbooks. She had taken top mark last year, but only just: if Sev hadn't misplaced his next-to-last essay of the year on the morning it was due, he would have edged her out. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll see you Monday for certain, and if I can get away tomorrow afternoon…'

'You'll know where to find me,' Sev said. There was a shadow of disappointment in his eyes, but he seemed to understand. He was a very good friend. He hesitated for a moment, running the tip of his tongue over his pale lips. 'Lily, about Ancient Runes,' he said awkwardly. 'My mother never took it, so I don't have… I couldn't get…'

'Well, well, well, what is this?' a deep voice asked, expensive robes rustling. Lily turned, startled, to find the corridor behind her eclipsed by the skinny form of Rodolphus Lestrange. 'Lurking in the shadows, Snape? And with your pet Gryffindor, too! Isn't that touching?'

Severus had jumped at the sound of his voice, his hand flying to his belt where his wand was tucked at the ready. But he moved his arm away from it with a visible effort, clasping his hands behind his back. It was the most nonthreatening position a wizard could take: even the Muggle convention of putting one's hands, palms outward, in the air allowed easier access to one's wand. Sev's eyes were wide and wary, and he looked as guilty as if he had been caught thieving from a churchbox.

'We were just… we were having a word about timetables, that's all,' he stammered in a slavish voice that made Lily feel rather ill.

'Do I look like I care about third year timetables?' Lestrange asked disdainfully, flicking some invisible speck from the front of his robes. They were of the regulation black, but they were cut from silk grosgrain, Lily noticed, rather than more modest and practical cloth. Work robes indeed, she thought indignantly.

'He has a right to speak to whoever he wishes,' she told the older youth coolly.

Lestrange sneered. ' _Whomever_ ,' he corrected. Then he leered at Sev. 'Not only a Mudblood, but common as well. You do keep strange company, Snape.'

Lily's intestines twisted with humiliated revulsion at that hateful word. Severus's pale face grew rather greyish, even in the rosy glow of the torchlight. 'She's not a—' he began, but the words died on his lips and he fixed his gaze determinedly on the floor just short of Lestrange's gleaming shoes. 'There's still time until curfew,' he mumbled.

'Yes, but you're wanted in the wine cellar,' said Lestrange, now looking bored. 'The Head Boy has some things he'd like to say, now that his position has been made official. You made yourself very scarce on the train.'

There were several strange things about those words, but Lily seized reflexively upon the most interesting. It almost made her forget what Lestrange had called her, and that her friend had not quite dared to tell him off for doing so. 'Hogwarts has a wine cellar?' she asked Sev.

'It's empty now,' he said, not meeting her eyes. 'It's just a quiet place where we can talk while the Prefects organise the first years. I've got to go, Lily. I… I'll see you.'

'Sev…' she began, but she caught the look in Lestrange's eye and subsided. She knew that her friend walked on perpetually thin ice with his housemates, who held his Muggle surname over him in a way that the pure-bloods in Gryffindor never did – no, not even the likes of Black and Potter. She did not want to make matters worse for Severus.

'Good night,' she said instead, holding her head high as she strode past Lestrange. He did not move to allow her broader passage, and their sleeves almost brushed. She hesitated at the mouth of the corridor, looking back.

Lestrange swept forward, seizing Sev's shoulder roughly and turning him around so that they could stride in the opposite direction, along the hallway that led (albeit by a roundabout path) to the dungeons. Sev's head trailed back over his shoulder as he went, and his eyes met hers, brimming with an apology he did not quite dare to speak in front of the scornful sixth year. 'Night,' he whispered.

They rounded the corner and he was gone.

Lily stood there for a moment, a tumult of unhappy emotions broiling within her. Loathing of Lestrange, with his hateful language and his overbred bearing and his domineering attitude. Hurt for Severus, who had to keep his head down around such boys if he wanted to have even a moment's peace behind the wall that guarded the Slytherin Dungeon. Annoyance with herself, for being unable to do more to help her friend or to take the entitled sixth year down a peg or two. She might have stood there forever, as the last footsteps dwindled in the Entrance Hall behind, but she heard an insistent voice squeak with the strain of early adolescence.

'…want to stop by the kitchens?' Peter Pettigrew asked. 'I'm sure the house-elves wouldn't mind, and you didn't even get dessert.'

The implications of this pricked at Lily. So Potter and his friends thought they could raid the kitchens whenever they pleased, did they? She knew that plenty of students did so, but _plenty of students_ did not also waltz through the halls of the school as if they owned the place. Potter and Black were, in their own charismatic way, every bit as arrogant and entitled as Rodolphus Lestrange. Lily rather thought she would enjoy giving them a piece of her mind.

She turned on her heel and strode out into the Entrance Hall. At the top of the stairs, James Potter and his gang were moving quickly for the turn that wound most directly towards Gryffindor Tower.

Sirius Black spoke, his voice terse and dangerous. 'Leave it alone, Pettigrew,' he growled. 'I don't need you fussing over me. I've had a bite. It's better than nothing.'

Lily started up the stairs, moving as briskly and authoritatively as she could. As soon as she was on level ground with them, she would tell them just what she thought of pilfering from the kitchens when they had only just come from a sumptuous feast. But Black was still talking.

'If I get peckish in the night, I can always loot that stash of sweets you keep in your trunk,' he snapped, and then lengthened his stride and quickened his pace, vanishing around the corner and leaving his three friends bewildered in his wake.

Peter Pettigrew looked worriedly up at James Potter, who shook his head regretfully. 'Just let him be,' he said, not unkindly. 'He's had a disappointment. He'll get over it.'

He nodded his head up the corridor, an invitation to the plump little boy to follow him. The fourth member of their gang cast a careful eye around the all-but-empty Entrance Hall before following them. He did not seem to notice Lily. He did not seem to have been taking in any details. It was the habitual survey of a rearguard, Lily thought, alert only to threats. It made her think of the grave-faced men standing guard at Platform 9 and ¾ that morning, watching for everything and nothing all at once, ready for anything.

She liked Remus Lupin. He was quiet and polite, he was studious and he was kind. He was everything, in short, that Black and Potter were not, and she could not for the life of her understand why he followed them so faithfully. He did not seem to see what she saw in those two: the arrogance, the casual spite, and the lazy disregard for all those around them. Sometimes Lily wondered if Black and Potter bullied him. Remus was always turning up with mysterious bruises, or moving through the corridors gingerly, as if in pain. It was obvious that he had a sickly constitution, and he often even had to miss lessons. He needed friends who would look out for him, who would be mindful of his needs when he was feeling poorly, who would make life easier for him instead of wearing him out with their silly antics. Instead, he had Potter and Black.

'All alone?'

Lily turned at the sound, gripping the balustrade so that she did not overbalance on the top step of the marble staircase. Dorcas Meadowes, who had been a Prefect for all of Lily's years at Hogwarts, was just coming out of the empty Great Hall. She looked back as she crossed the threshold, satisfied that there were no students left behind, and closed the great doors.

'I'm on my way back to the Tower,' Lily promised. 'I just…' She trailed off, unsure what to say.

'Mind if I walk with you?' asked Dorcas pleasantly. 'I didn't mean to be the last one out, but that's what happens if you dawdle. We girls ought to stick together.'

Lily remembered Betta's parting words, and wondered if there was more truth to the warning that she had thought at the time. But no, that was absurd. Nobody was going to stir up trouble on the first night of term, and anyway if Lucius Malfoy was convening a meeting in the dungeons, it was likely that all of the Slytherin ringleaders would be there.

'Are you excited for seventh year?' she asked, eager to distract herself from thoughts of Sev, alone among the bigger boys and their cronies.

Dorcas offered her a half-smile. 'It's complicated,' she said. 'There's a great deal to learn, and a great deal to be done, but at the same time knowing it's my last year is… well, it's bittersweet, and there's no other word for it.'

Lily nodded. She could understand that. 'I can't believe it's third year already, either,' she said. 'Seems like yesterday that I was up there on that stool, listening to the Hat calling out my House. I didn't expect to be put in Gryffindor, you know.'

'Didn't you?' Dorcas asked. 'Were you hoping for Ravenclaw? You're right clever, I know that. The teachers talk about you.'

'Do they?' Lily asked, pleased and surprised.

Dorcas nodded sagely. 'Oh, yes. Flitwick and Slughorn are especially fond of boasting about your performance in their classes, but it's Professor McGonagall who's expecting great things from you.'

'She is?' Lily felt a hot flush of pride on her cheeks, and she tried to tamp it down. She looked up to her indomitable Head of House, but her work in Transfiguration was consistently outshone by Potter and Black. 'That's… I don't know what to say.'

'No need to say anything,' Dorcas told her. 'She'll mention it in her own good time. I only bring it up because I would've liked to have known she had her eye on me, back in my salad days.' For a moment her gaze was very distant, and she looked older than her seventeen years. Then she gave a little sigh and smiled sidelong at Lily as they started up another flight of stairs. 'Enjoy your time as a schoolgirl, that's my advice. As soon as you've got your OWLs… well, things change.'

'I suppose that makes sense,' said Lily. Then, because it seemed a polite and topical question, she asked; 'What are you pursuing for your NEWTs?'

'Transfiguration, Defence Against the Dark Arts,' said Dorcas, ticking off her fingers. 'Charms, Astronomy, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes.'

'I'm taking Ancient Runes,' Lily said happily. 'What's the teacher like?'

'Professor Oxymore? She's a good sort,' Dorcas answered. 'Still waters run deep. Pay attention in class, do your homework, don't neglect your language exercises, and you'll do all right with her.'

'I'd do all that anyhow,' Lily assured her. They walked along in companionable silence for a while, until Lily thought of another question that had come to her during Professor Dumbledore's start-of-term speech. 'Do you know anything about the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher?'

'Professor Culpepper?' Dorcas asked, and that was already more than most students would have remembered about him. Lily decided she liked the older girl: she paid attention. 'Not much. He was in seventh year when I was in first, and he's got some advanced certifications in Defence and Duelling. No championships, so far as I know; not like Brynna Meyrigg, but then he's younger. I've heard he's well-travelled.'

It seemed peculiar to speak about a teacher, even a former teacher, by her first name. Lily said; 'It was very sad, what happened to Professor Meyrigg. So terrible, to lose a baby.'

There were whispers of other things, darker things, surrounding Professor Meyrigg's departure, but Lily did not know what to believe. Surely no one would curse a pregnant woman, would they? And it seemed absurd to suggest, as some people did, that she had left school every weekend on secret missions for Headmaster Dumbledore. But speculation had run riot in those frightening days last June, when _The Daily Prophet_ had been full of terrible news.

In a flash, Lily remembered the dreadful photograph of the Big Ben clocktower with the phantom skull-and-snake beside it and the words _I AM LORD VOLDEMORT_ written above the spread body of a murdered man. She shivered. She did not think he had ever been identified.

'A-are you a Muggle-born?' she asked suddenly, the words coming out before she could censor them. It was an impolite question, and more than that it was immaterial, or ought to be. But part of her hoped that this brave, confident Prefect might share her heritage.

Dorcas shook her head. 'My father's Muggle-born,' she said. 'My mother's a pure-blood.'

'Oh.' Lily didn't know what to say. 'I'm Muggle-born.'

'You ought to be proud of that,' the Prefect said earnestly. 'You were born with a talent neither of your parents have. You're special. You've been chosen for great things.' She stopped walking. The Fat Lady was just up the corridor, mumbling sleepily to herself. Dorcas Meadowes put a hand on each of Lily's shoulders, looking her squarely in the eye. 'Great gifts are given to people with the strength to use them. Make sure you make the most of yours.'

Lily gazed up at the solemn eyes behind their horn-rimmed spectacles. There was an intensity of feeling in them that made her at once uneasy and very eager to rise up to meet her potential. 'I will,' she promised.

Dorcas smiled, and the spell was broken. She was once again just an amiable young woman, escorting one of her charges back to the common room. 'Good girl,' she said. Then she approached the portrait. 'Good evening,' she said, and the Fat Lady opened her eyes with a drowsy snort.

'Password?' she asked.

' _Library of Alexandria_ ,' said Dorcas, nodding her approval as the portrait swung aside. She motioned to Lily. 'After you.'

The new male Prefect, whose name Lily could not remember, was counting off the first year girls for their dormitory assignments. Lily skirted around the crowd and hurried up the stairs to the familiar door on the third landing.

She walked into a veritable hurricane of activity. Charlotte had her cupboard open wide, and was trotting back and forth with armloads of books, trying to get everything where she wanted it. Betta, who was not a careful packer, was unloading her jumbled trunk with her wand, sending robes and frocks and undergarments flying in every direction. A pair of silky knickers snagged on the left post of her bed, whirling around once by the leg-hole before falling limp against the canopy. In the corner nearest the water closet, Elsie Appleby was on elbows and knees, her head and shoulders stuck far under her bed as she clicked her tongue and tried to make coaxing sounds. Just as Lily walked in, Paulina Vane burst out of the water closet, wrapped snugly in one of the big towels and scrubbing at her hair with another.

'There's a new soap,' she announced, ducking under one of Betta's sturdy walking boots as she made her way to her bed. 'Smells of apricots. Quite nice, really.'

'I don't care for apricots,' Betta said idly, letting the boot skid to the back of the lowest shelf of her cupboard and then Levitating its mate with unnecessary force. It, too, flew out of the trunk and trundled along at eye-level before taking a sharp dive.

'You could try to unpack like a civilised person,' Lily teased, crossing warily to her own trunk. She laid a hand on her satchel, making a quick count of her baggage to be sure everything had arrived. There never seemed to be any errors with their possessions at Hogwarts, but she had grown up holidaying in Muggle hotels with porters who were working without magic. It didn't hurt to double-check.

'Where's the fun in that?' asked Betta airily. 'What are we learning all these spells for, if not to use them? And how do I perfect them if I don't practice?'

'Here, Speckles, come out, Speckles!' Elsie called. She sighed and slumped low, thumping her forehead on the floor. Her rump was sticking up in the air, rather inelegantly.

Lily gnawed her lip sympathetically. 'Hiding again, is he?' she asked.

'It's the noise on the stairs,' said Elsie woefully, emerging from under the bed and sitting back on her heels. In any ordinary bedroom, she would have emerged with a dust bunny or two in her hair, but the dormitories were always absolutely spotless. Lily sometimes wondered what sort of magic lay behind that, but she did not have time to ponder it now. Elsie was shaking her head wearily; 'Every time he hears heavy footsteps on the landing, he heads straight for the corner. And everyone's been thundering up and down stairs for the last half hour!'

'He'll come out when he's ready,' Lily said soothingly. She slung her satchel over the footboard of her bed and opened her trunk so that she could begin to unload her own clothing – all of it neatly folded, and _none_ of it about to go careening through the air at breakneck speeds. 'The first years will be heading upstairs straight away, anyhow: he'd only take shelter again.'

'I don't understand it,' Elsie sighed. 'He's so brave about everything else, but the stairs frighten him. Well, stairs and baths.'

The other girls exchanged a meaningful glance, trying not to laugh. Elsie Appleby's cat was notoriously hostile towards bathing. As a new kitten, he had enjoyed the gentle ministrations of his mistress in the porcelain sink. Elsie always kept the water precisely warm enough, and she had handled him with care, and they had all enjoyed watching him paddle with his tiny forepaws. But he had disappeared for two harrowing days last spring, and when he came back he had brought with him an aversion to water that could not be explained. Now he flailed, squealed and scratched whenever Elsie took him near the sink.

'Baths don't frighten him, lassie, they send him into a rage!' Betta laughed. She ran a hand through her chestnut hair and stretched expansively. 'Goodness, but I'm stiff! I don't think much of that train.'

'How would you prefer to arrive? Mounted on one of your hatchlings, I suppose?' Paulina teased good-naturedly. She was the odd woman out in their dormitory, far closer to the MacGreggor sisters than her own roommates, but they all got on well enough. Lily supposed that made them lucky: for all the care Hogwarts took in Sorting its students by temperament, the assignment of their beds was absurdly random.

'Ye can't ride a hatchling,' said Betta indulgently. 'They're far too small. And they don't fly themselves until they're six months old. Hebredian Blacks are like draft horses: break 'em at two, ride 'em at three.' She put down her wand and got up to collect the pieces of clothing that had resisted her efforts to get them into the cupboard. 'Didn't run into trouble, did you, lovey?' she asked Lily. 'You said you'd be right behind us, you know.'

Lily shrugged apologetically. 'It took a little longer than I thought,' she said. 'I said goodnight to Sev, then Potter and his friends were on the stairs, and finally I fell in with Dorcas Meadowes. She's actually very pleasant to talk to.'

'I think so, too,' Charlotte said quietly. She was smoothing her slips against her counterpane as she folded them. 'When I was feeling delicate last winter, she was very kind.'

No one needed more details. Charlotte _felt delicate_ with lunar regularity, for she was prone to crippling cramps that made Lily very grateful that her own monthlies were brief and mostly painless. Betta never discussed hers, and Paulina's usual complaints were about the inconvenience rather than pain. Elsie hadn't started her courses yet, unless she was very, very quiet about it. None of them would have ever dreamt of mentioning such things outside of the dormitory, which made Dorcas Meadowes's help and discretion all the more valuable to Charlotte.

'We've been meaning to talk to you, Lily. Charlotte and I,' Betta said. She looked regretful to be bringing this matter up, but she was never one to shirk away from difficult conversations. Nor to hesitate to have them out in front of the other girls, Lily thought with mild irritation. 'It's about Snape.'

Lily had guessed as much. There were only two real topics of contention between the three of them, and Sev was one. 'He's my friend,' she said. 'He's been my friend since I was small.'

'Aye,' Betta agreed. 'But he's not small now, is he? He's thirteen, and he's hard as nails, and he's running with a dangerous crowd.'

Lily sighed. She knew the latter was true, though she could see as others could not that _hard as nails_ was a bitterly unfair thing to say about a boy who had such a good heart, and was forced into a corner by his situation. 'He doesn't run with them, Betta,' she said softly. 'He's dragged along by them.'

'Be that as it may,' Betta said; 'you've got to be careful. Mulciber and the Lestrange brothers hunt down Muggle-borns and hurt them, Lily. At the end of term, they put three Hufflepuffs in the hospital wing in one afternoon, every single one of them with Muggle parents. When you go off alone with Snape, you need to be on the lookout.'

'Sev wouldn't let them hurt me,' Lily protested. 'Even supposing I couldn't take care of myself, which I can. I'm as good as anyone with that Disarming Charm Professor Alfstin taught us.'

'A Disarming Charm might not be enough,' Charlotte said. She came around the foot of Betta's bed, approaching Lily timidly. She was wringing her hands, a nervous habit that she could usually master. 'There are stories… I heard that last year they got someone in our class away from his friends, and lured him off to an empty classroom. Five of them set on him at once.'

'Who in our class?' Lily asked. Without a name, this was only an unsubstantiated rumour.

'I don't know,' Charlotte said gravely. 'That's the worst of it: whoever it was, he was too afraid to come forward. They got away with it.'

'And one of them used the Conjuctivus Curse on Sirius Black in November,' Betta agreed. 'We use it to incapacitate the dragons if they get dangerous, but using it on a _human_? They could have blinded him.'

'I'm quite sure Sirius Black gave as good as he got,' Lily said frostily. 'And while we're on the topic of friends, I don't understand what you see in him. He's arrogant and he's disruptive.'

'Aye, he is,' Betta agreed. 'But he's upstanding for all that. His heart's in the right place, and he's loyal to his friends – loyal to Gryffindor, too, and you can't deny it.'

'He's just as likely to hex someone in the corridors as any of Sev's housemates,' Lily said.

'Hex, to be sure, or jinx,' Betta said. She nodded at the third member of their little conclave. 'And he used his wand to tweak our Charlotte's pigtails. But so far as I know he's never tried to blind anyone, nor gone after a firstie with Dark Magic, sneering ugly blood-purist slurs.'

Lily's cheeks blazed, remembering what Lestrange had said. But Sev had tried to defend her, she told herself. He had started to speak up on her behalf, before his fear had knocked him back into humble silence. Betta was right about the Lestrange brothers, but she didn't seem to see that Sev was far more at their mercy than Lily would ever be. He had to share a common room with them, had to attend every one of his lessons among their followers. They could walk into his dormitory whenever they pleased, and how could he stop them?

'Sev's never done any of that,' she said softly.

'What about Ilythia Smythe?' asked Charlotte gently.

Lily's eyes flew to her, wary. She shook her head. 'You don't understand,' she said. 'They made him do that. They would have beaten him if he hadn't jinxed her, and he was so careful to choose something that wouldn't hurt her.'

'There's more ways to hurt a body than to send her to the hospital wing,' Betta said sombrely. She reached out and caught Lily's cold hand, squeezing it. 'I know he's your friend, Lily, and I know you wouldn't be so loyal to him if there wasn't something there worth caring for. But we're _your_ friends, and fine friends we'd be if we didn't warn you to take good care.'

Lily swallowed hard and nodded. 'I am,' she said. 'And Severus has got my back, Betta. He _has_. If I ever ran into trouble with the rest of them, he'd be on my side. He'd help to protect me. I know he would.'

'Well, from everything I've heard, you're best to have him on your side,' Betta said archly. Charlotte shot her a sharp look, and Betta shrugged. 'You don't want him against you,' she insisted.

'He could never be against me,' Lily declared. She turned her attention back to her trunk. 'Can you say the same for Sirius Black?'

She expected words of hurt or defensiveness, but Betta laughed. 'Faith, I've never thought to ask him!' she said. 'Not the sort of thing that comes up over a quick round of Quidditch, is it? But you can't deny he's charming.'

'Oh, yes, a little _too_ charming,' Lily said archly. Charlotte swallowed a noise of amusement at her tone. 'Charms his way out of trouble more often than he ought to be able to, that one. And Potter with him.'

'Oh, Potter,' said Betta expansively, flopping backwards onto her bed and stretching her arms wide. 'He's not as bad as all that.'

'You didn't have to share a carriage with him,' Lily said. 'He and Black were spoiling for a fight. If Remus Lupin hadn't been there to smooth things over, I think Sev would be in the hospital wing right now. And he didn't do a thing to provoke them, not a thing!'

Betta was gazing up at the heavy damask of her bed hangings, but Charlotte looked uncomfortable. 'You were in a carriage with Potter and Black _and_ Severus Snape?' she asked.

Lily nodded shortly. 'It was the last one. I couldn't very well turn them out of it. Black was in a foul mood.'

'His little brother's been Sorted into Slytherin; it's hardly a marvel that he's in a foul mood,' said Betta. 'He doesn't hold much truck with the things that are going on in that House, no more than any of the rest of us.'

'There are good people in Slytherin, too,' said Lily. 'And there are yobs in Gryffindor, of which Black's one of the worst. And I assure you that his foul mood was well in place before the Sorting.'

There was an insistent mewing. Speckles had emerged from under Elsie's bed, and he was looking for his mistress. Behind the water closet door, the shower was roaring steadily.

'She's gone for a wash,' Lily told the cat, reaching over her trunk to pat her mattress. The cat leapt up, preening as she scratched him behind the ears. He was almost ten months old now, and still had the gangly, awkward, half-grown look that would soon be replaced by sinuous grace. He butted against her hand, inviting her to scratch harder.

'Goodnight, girls,' Paulina said. She was in her nightgown now, climbing into bed. 'Good to be back again, isn't it?'

'Wonderful!' Charlotte agreed. As the bedcurtains whisked closed, she turned back to Lily and said; 'I'm ever so excited about the new lessons. Have you looked at the Ancient Runes book yet?'

'A little,' Lily admitted; 'though I couldn't make much sense of it. Sev and I went through about three months worth of material for Potions, though. We've got some interesting things coming up.'

'Care of Magical Creatures,' said Betta with relish. 'No need for me to read ahead in that one. It'll be a nice change of pace to have a class that doesn't take much effort.'

'All very well for you,' said Charlotte. 'I don't know the first thing about Magical Creatures, apart from the ones Professor Meyrigg taught us.'

'Those were mainly Dark creatures,' Betta told her. 'You're not likely to come across a Kappa or a werewolf in Professor Kettleburn's lessons. Not likely we'll even see a dragon, more's the pity. Perhaps I should as if he'd like my da to bring one down for a lesson or two.'

Lily chuckled. 'I don't think they'd let us have a dragon on school grounds,' she said.

'A day trip, then!' said Betta. 'We could do a tour of the island.'

'It still sounds like a NEWTs-level adventure,' said Lily. 'The book talks about Kneazles and Nifflers and things.'

'Divination should be interesting,' Charlotte said. 'Though my father wasn't very pleased to hear I'm going to study fortune-telling. He thinks it's the devil's business.'

Lily nodded sympathetically. She knew people in Cokeworth who felt that way, though of course they had no idea that magic was real, or that Divination was something you could study academically in a proper school. 'What did your mum say?' she asked.

'That just because he couldn't understand it didn't make it evil,' said Charlotte. 'After all, they can't really understand any of the things we're doing at Hogwarts, and they agreed to let me come, so they have to be open-minded. She said.'

Lily thought Charlotte's mum had a sensible attitude to the whole thing, and she was grateful that her own parents shared it. She felt a pang of hurt when she thought about Petunia, who had scarcely spoken to her for the first three weeks of the holidays. She knew her sister was hurt and envious that Lily had talents she did not. And she knew that Tunie had been disappointed when it became clear that Lily would not attend her school, that she would never have the chance to show her around, to teach her the ropes, to share in her daily discoveries.

Abruptly she realised that Sirius Black must be feeling many of the same things right now, with his brother settling into a different set of dormitories many stories below. The thought was an uncomfortable one. She was not accustomed to thinking of Black as having feelings – he certainly had little enough regard for anyone else's.

There was a tapping at the window, and Speckles stiffened, arching his back and hissing an angry warning. He did not dive for his shelter under Elsie's bed, but instead leapt off of Lily's mattress and raced across the room, springing from Paulina's trunk to the windowsill and hissing all the while. His tail stood straight up in the air, fur standing on end as he warned off the intruder.

The tapping persisted. Betta rolled onto her stomach and propelled herself off the bed with both hands. She twisted her back, stretching again, as she went to the window and unlatched it.

'Ah, hello!' she cried happily, scooping up the spitting kitten so that the owl could step into the room. It did so with tremendous dignity, completely unperturbed by the cat. It was a stately bird, sleek and dark, and it cocked its head expectantly at Betta.

'I've got just the thing for you,' Betta said, handing off the kitten to Charlotte, who warily looped both arms around it. A quick rummage in Betta's trunk brought out a paper sack of owl treats, and she returned to the window. 'That's my laddie. It's a fine thing to see you again.'

'Does Black know you feed his owl?' Lily asked, mildly annoyed.

'I've never asked,' said Betta. The glorious creature came around to their window at least once a week, ever since Potter had trained his own owl to dive at the players during Quidditch practices, simulating a Bludger's assault. Lily could not help but admire the owl, whatever she thought of its master. 'It's good to be friendly with an owl or two. You never know when you might want to smuggle out a parcel.'

'Where would you smuggle a parcel to?' asked Charlotte, interested.

Betta shrugged. 'Don't know,' she admitted. 'But this beauty's got a mighty range, from the look of him. I could send him anywhere at all.'

'Oh, please do,' Lily said. 'I'd love to watch Black squirm, wondering where his pet's got to.'

'That's not very nice.' It was Elsie, padding barefoot out of the lavatory. She was wearing her dressing gown, and she held out her arms to Charlotte, taking Speckles. He was calm now, having decided there was no need to fend off the owl, and he curled contentedly against her. 'When Speckles went missing, I was out of my mind with worry. I was convinced that horrid Mrs Dashwood had eaten him! And I still don't know where you went, do I, my pretty little boy?' she asked the cat, puckering her mouth to blow him a kiss as she rubbed his silky belly.

'I've often wondered about that,' said Betta thoughtfully. 'He was too small in those days to get out the portrait hole on his own. He'd only just mastered the stairs, remember?'

'And then he turned up looking like he'd been under one of those hair-drying helmets,' Charlotte said. 'It took days for the fluff to settle down.'

'Who's next for the shower?' Lily asked. The back of her throat was beginning to prickle with weariness, and her bed looked very inviting.

'I am,' Betta said, offering the owl one more treat and rubbing his eye ridge with the knuckle of her first finger. 'Go on, now, stretch your wings,' she advised. 'You can't like the train any more than I do.'

The owl offered her a low, trilling hoot of sympathy and launched into the air, wheeling off over the Lake with long, strong beats of his dark wings. Betta watched him go, then closed and latched the window. She gathered her nightdress and toothbrush, and strolled off for the lavatory.

'She's only looking out for your safety,' Charlotte said quietly once the water started up. She picked up the last pile of Lily's clothes, and took them to the cupboard, laying them on the proper shelf with care. 'We both are.'

For a moment Lily did not understand what she was talking about. Then she sighed. 'Sev,' she said. She scrubbed at her eyes and brushed her hair back from her shoulders. 'I wish you'd take the time to get to know him, Charlotte. He's such a good friend to me.'

'To you, maybe,' said Charlotte, still staring into the cupboard even though there was nothing more for her to arrange. 'But he wants nothing to do with me.'

She said this with such certainty that Lily found herself doubting Severus just for a moment. Had he said something to Charlotte? Done something? Surely not. He wouldn't. He knew Charlotte was Lily's friend, and even if he didn't care to get to know her he would never do her harm.

'I can be friends with both of you,' Lily said softly. 'I can be faithful to both of you. And to Betta. I… I don't have to choose, do I? You're not asking me to choose?'

Suddenly Charlotte turned, and threw her arms around Lily, hugging her close. 'Of course not!' she said, so fervently that every doubt was driven from Lily's mind. 'You're my friend, you'll always be my friend, and I'd never ask you to choose! Only do be careful, Lily. Promise me you'll be careful.'

'I always am,' Lily said, for what felt like the dozenth time that night. 'Of course I am.'

Charlotte eased her embrace, letting her hands slip down to cup Lily's elbows. She looked steadily into her eyes, something she had not done at all during her first few months at Hogwarts, when her shyness had kept her from opening up even to the girls with whom she lived. 'Then it's all right,' she said with certainty. 'Everything is as it should be.'

And it was, Lily thought, warmth and welcome filling her heart again. They were back at Hogwarts, with the promise of another wonderful year ahead. She was surrounded by her friends, and she had not one but two lessons with Sev to look forward to – why, she would see him every day, with the timetable as it was! And she had made a promise tonight, too, to make the most of her gifts. She made another one now. She would always be faithful to her friends, to all of her friends, even when she had to balance their interests and their wishes against one another. She could move between them gracefully, if she tried hard enough, and between the two rival Houses. She was sure of it.

She was, after all, entrusted with great gifts. She had to strive to do great things.

 _finis_


End file.
